


Devour

by ColorfulStabwound



Series: There is a number of small things [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Devour, M/M, Monsters, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Pain, Sex, Sleep, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorfulStabwound/pseuds/ColorfulStabwound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes I wonder how he knows all of my secrets, the ones that I would never tell anyone. But then I remind myself that he knows me better than I know myself. Of course he sees everything, even all the dirty tarnished bits that I wish he couldn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devour

**Author's Note:**

> Pain's not ashamed to repeat itself.
> 
> For Theodore, you know who you are.

_Your bare foot dips into a pool of wetness that ripples like torn silk in the darkness; invitingly. Countless fallen petals are drowning in a liquid embrace, each one specifically calling out a song that only you can hear. The metallic scent of blood burns your nostrils and you find yourself clutching your skin in a desperate act to escape the pain of your surroundings. The softest breath slides past your parted lips, lips that ache to speak so many words that die a thousand deaths; never heard. The realization is crippling, disabling in its intent and you finds that your words are only screams, screams that are but a whisper to a sleeping mind. The darkness is tangible in ways that you cannot comprehend. Where is there to turn when there is nothing at all to see? Fingers claw at your face and head like talons and something is gripping your throat and you think that you might die here. A stinging pain rises to a crescendo and you drop to your hands and knees, fingers splayed out in cold crimson like tea stained paper fans. You silently beg for death or darkness or numbness; anything to make the weight of your actions terminate their relentless press upon you. Your head sags like dead weight between sharp and shadowed shoulder blades and when you lift your gaze another scream terrorizes your throat, shredding you from the inside out and then…there is nothing at all._

_Blackness. At last._

_-@-_

My fingertips reach out in the darkness and a raw sigh escapes past lips that had been formed to scream only moments ago. I’m desperate for a momentary lapse in confusion and this isn’t the first time I’ve been here. The dreams like waking nightmares plague me more often than I like to admit, and when my fingers close around a warm and sleeping wrist, I don’t have to admit it at all. I can feel the blood coursing through my veins just below my skin. It runs cold like the sweat that clings to my spine and the vivid pictures that resemble horrific memories slowly fade and filter away. I take a moment, perhaps two; the very tips of my fingers moving methodically over the pulse of his sleeping skin, lids fluttering shut as I just…breathe.

 

The world inside my head when I sleep isn’t real, at least not in a direct sense. I’m quietly repeating this mantra where I lay and it isn’t until the wrist twists in my loose grasp that I realize he is awake.

 

“The hardest part is letting go...” There is a slight grogginess hidden in the depths of his mien that tells me he hasn’t been awake very long and I smile in the darkness, abstractly pleased that his body is so finely tuned to mine that it even wakes when I do.

 

“I’m fine.” Is my auto-response and I almost mean it.

 

Sometimes he accepts my attempts at downplay but tonight is not one of those nights. The bed shifts with his movements and I can almost make out his form in the cloak of darkness as he inches closer. I feel his breath on my cheek and I know he’s there, hovering over me as if he can read the slowly disintegrating distress on my face in the shadows.

 

“I didn’t mean to wake you.” I say and my voice is more like a cracked whisper than anything else.

 

I hate these moments; the small fragments when I fall apart like jagged glass missing all its pieces. I have always been my own worst enemy and it is times like these that the knowledge of that solitary fact resonates profoundly.

 

“Come back to me.” He murmurs quiet and his voice is like an impossible beacon in the dead of night.

 

Sometimes I wonder how he knows all of my secrets, the ones that I would never tell anyone. But then I remind myself that he knows me better than I know myself. Of course he sees everything, even all the dirty tarnished bits that I wish he couldn’t.

 

“Always.”  I reply almost instantly, and the weight of that promise is not lost on either one of us.

 

Without another word he’s covering my body with his own and I cannot decide if it’s protective or provocative—Maybe it’s both.

 

My fingers are still shaking when I reach up and trace the outline of his cheekbone and the sharp angles are familiar in all the right ways. He turns his head and presses his lips to the palm of my hand and I sigh softly as the warmth from his touch spreads over my surface like a patiently smoldering fire.  There is no need for formed words, ours is often an unspoken language that transcends sound or reason. Right now his unsaid words are like a crack in a storm cloud and they successfully mute out mine that sound like screams. 

 

His lips press against the pulse of my wrist and mouth it wetly and my breath catches in my throat. From there he trails a delicate line of weightless kisses up my arm, pausing to pay special attention to the bend in the center of my arm; another pulse point. It doesn’t take long for me to decipher what he’s doing; it isn’t science or even magic, even if it feels like both. The trail of kisses leads up my arm and over my shoulder where his mouth closes over the pulse of my throat. My head rolls to the side nearly of its own accord and I shudder, willingly submitting to him.

 

When his lips press openly to my temple the pain beneath my skin nearly breaks me, and my arms move to circle him and hold him so firmly that it is impossible to discern where he ends and I begin. In those moments I feel like I could devour him, literally as well as figuratively.  He’s covering me again and my teeth sink into him before I can stop myself and when he hisses sharply I almost regret it.

 

He doesn’t stop me. He never stops me. And I know I shouldn’t, but I often take advantage of this virtue.

 

When my fingers curl into his skin like they could tear him apart he doesn’t object, and when I roll him over and press his back into damp pillows, he welcomes it. I’m taking my turn covering him now, although I’m more like an untamed monster than he ever was. My mouth crashes into him repeatedly and without heed, a litany of abrasions that would make me sick later, left in my wake like a clear cut path of destruction. 

 

I can’t contemplate the veracity of my actions now and I am unable to think any further than this moment. He is spread out below me like a fallen angel for the taking and my heart burns and I want to choke on the intensity of it all. 

 

Maybe it’s the nightmare that makes me this way, or maybe this has been me all along.

 

We are like a finely tuned mechanism of sweat and skin and bone and somewhere between the impurity and the depravity we meet in the middle like two lost souls trapped between bookends. His fingertips trail scorching lines of fire over my skin and his breathy lilt encourages me and I feast on the compliancy, eager and desperate. The shadows of my nightmares are long forgotten now, even if the abstract sense of terror remained and showed itself in every chaotic and frantic move I made.  We fuck like we’re the last two monsters on earth and my desire to swallow him whole is like a fever-pitch that crashes down all around us in the end.

 

Later, he will brush my hair away from my eyes and smile at me from behind bruised and swollen lips and I’ll wonder why I am the way that I am and why he loves me. I’ll kiss every mark I imposed on him, new and old, and I’ll tell him that I love him too.  He’ll trace over my skin soothingly and make me feel human again and maybe we’ll even drift back to sleep; bloodied and sore and boneless. I have no idea what tomorrow brings and every time I lie down to close my eyes I am powerless to the fact that it could be my last. As if reading my thoughts his arm slides across the flat surface of my abdomen and curls around me like an anchor.

 

My anchor.


End file.
